If the answer to any or all of the above questions is yes, then consider pursuing Honors in English. Qualified students must enroll in both a one-semester seminar and thesis credits. Please read below for more information.
ENGL 4900-001 English Honors Seminar (2 credits)
This course should be taken toward the end of your college career. It is a workshop designed to help you develop, draft, and finish a critical thesis. You will be assigned a sequence of writing assignments-including but not limited to an abstract, annotated bibliography, and proposal-to help you successfully accomplish the various stages of your project. Weekly meetings will give you the opportunity to share and workshop your drafts in a structured environment. The rest of the work will occur through independent research, writing, and tutorials with the English Department Honors Advisor, Dr. Melissa Gregory, as well as with an outside thesis director. The project will culminate in a formal defense with the Honors committee. This is an ideal course for those students who wish to experience the pleasure of pursuing an independent research project or who are considering graduate school in English or another discipline.
Prerequisite: Admission to the course is contingent on permission from the Honors Advisor and Committee. Interested students must contact Dr. Gregory before they sign up for the course : melissa.gregory@utoledo.edu ; 419-530-4915; University Hall 5070-A.
4960-001 English Honors Thesis (4 credits)
These thesis credit hours are taken in conjunction with the Honors Seminar (ENGL 4900) and are required of all candidates for departmental honors. They represent the actual research and writing of the thesis. Prerequisite: Approval of the Honors Committee.
Please note that ENGL 4900 and ENGL 4960 are usually offered only during the FALL Semester.
Do You Qualify for English Honors?
An Honors Candidate Must:
Please note that you do not have to be enrolled in the College Honors program to pursue departmental Honors.
First-year and sophomore English majors are encouraged to start planning for Honors early! Don't hesitate to contact the Honors Advisor with questions.
HONORS THESES, 2005
English Department
University of Toledo
Rebecca Dorosz, "Little Mothers: Father-Daughter Relationships in Dickens's Novels" (director: Dr. Gregory)
"Through an examination of the complexity of Dickens's daughters, I suggest that Charles Dickens's portrayal of the relationships between young daughters and their fathers in Little Dorrit (1855-57), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Our Mutual Friend (1864-65) exposes the cracks and fissures in the Victorian ideal of the loyal daughter even as it endorses that ideal."
Fatima Hasabelnaby, "Mary Shelley's Narrative Frames and the Importance of Collective Telling" (director: Dr. Gregory)
"In this paper, I argue that Mary Shelley's narrative frames in both Frankenstein (1831) and The Last Man (1826) function structurally to undermine the notion of an ultimate interpretive authority figure, challenging the Romantic ideal of the artist as lone genius, and highlighting, instead, the importance of community in the process of writing, as well as in human interaction and survival."
Brittany Howard, "The Transcendence of Boundaries and Unification of the Human Experience in Robert Frost's Poetry" (director: Dr. Reising)
"In this paper, I argue that Robert Frost's poetry uses images of boundaries and limitations to illuminate a crucial aspect of the human experience: the failure to overcome differences, or the ability to transcend them. In Frost's poems, human beings who are confronted with boundaries either see them as an insurmountable division, or they reflect upon how life's diverse aspects can be unified, thus using the boundary as an opportunity for personal growth."
Lynn Johnson, "How Mina Harker Became Buffy Summers: The Evolution of the New Woman in the Dracula Narrative" (director: Dr. Gregory)
"My thesis explores Bram Stoker's use of the Victorian figure of the 'New Woman' in Dracula (1899), and argues that recent film and television adaptations further develop and challenge Stoker's original representation. I propose that as the New Woman evolves from Stoker's Mina Harker to Joss Whedon's Buffy Summers, film and television force the Dracula narrative to give increasing attention to female sexuality in order to more fully investigate the ambiguity surrounding women's roles."
Justin Longacre, "Violence and Redemption in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction" (director: Dr. Lundquist)
" Although scholars readily acknowledge the importance of violence in Flannery O'Connor's fiction, they tend to over-simplify its use as a simple aesthetic device. I maintain that O'Connor's violence is more nuanced, and is often used as a redemptive catalyst to confront both her readers and characters with the "violent grace" at the center of her worldview."
Will Myers, "Beyond the Funhouse: The Post-Postmodern Hero in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest" (director: Dr. Reising)
"This thesis examines the nascent, poorly-defined genre of post-postmodernism through David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (1996), and argues that the central project of both post-postmodern literature and of Wallace's novel-attempting to subvert late postmodernism's jaded irony and intellectual stasis-is best understood in terms of Wallace's competing conceptions of the hero: particularly his fusion of the modern, active hero with the postmodern, reactive hero."
Logan Sheehan, "Darkly as Through the Veil: The Biblical Conceit of the Veil and American Ideals in The Souls of Black Folk " (director: Dr. Gillespie)
"My paper explores the parallels of the biblical conceit of the veil and W. E. B. Du Bois's use of the veil symbol in The Souls of Black Folk in order to show how Du Bois accesses the veil symbol as a device to articulate the unique position of black souls and to call for prophetic action that furthers the cause of social equality."
Sara Staten, "Female Responsibility and the Authentic Life: Rethinking Feminism in the Work of Kate Chopin" (director: Dr. Reising)
"In this paper, I investigate both Kate Chopin's short story collection Bayou Folk (1894) as well as her more well-known novel The Awakening (1899) in order to challenge and complicate contemporary scholarly assessments of Chopin's feminism, which tend to paint Chopin as a writer who uses her work to rail against patriarchy. I propose that reading Chopin's lesser-known fiction in conjunction with her most famous work reveals a feminist ideology that places the burden of contentment upon women themselves."